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Companies are increasingly embracing the open-source movement, and that's good for disruptive innovation, writes Lauren States, chief technology officer at IBM Corporate Strategy. Open technologies can provide a platform for customization, allowing companies to collaborate and to tap user insights. "With businesses around the world pursuing disruptive innovation through open technologies, the future will present unlimited opportunities," States writes.

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Despite new technologies and myriad reorganizations, a new drug still takes about $1 billion and 17 years to get to market, but that could change if open-source advocates succeed, writes John Wilbanks, chief commons officer at Sage Bionetworks and a senior fellow at FasterCures. Incentives in the life sciences industry and academia discourage the same kind of open innovation model embraced in the technology field, Wilbanks writes. Public access policies and more industry collaborations, along with cheap, readily available data, are changing the landscape, he writes.

Red Hat predicts 2012 will make it the first open-source vendor to make $1 billion in revenue. That watershed could earn respect for open-source software as both a solid choice for the enterprise and as an innovative technology, experts say. Open-source cloud tools such as OpenStack and database programs such as Stig are poised to make their mark, according to this article. "I think we're seeing a fundamental shift in where innovation happens, going from the labs of a few software companies to these massive open-source efforts," said Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat.

Now that its acquisition by Oracle is done, leadership changes are taking place within Sun. One of the first is the resignation of Simon Phipps, Sun's chief open source officer for the past decade. Phipps says one of his biggest disappointments was the open-source software business wasn't able to keep Sun moving forward on its own.

T-Mobile USA will need to upgrade its 3G network to HSPA 7.2 by year-end before adding another update -- to HSPA 21 -- by next year, the carrier's chief technology officer said Thursday. Cole Brodman was asserting that users of Android-based phones are the most prolific in the world. Brodman also praised the innovations emanating from Android's open-source technology, saying, "I don't see any other platform that is approaching it in the same way."

In this podcast, John Bruggeman, chief marketing officer of Linux software provider Wind River Systems, delves into Android's technical, business-model and open-source implications. The open-source mobile platform could bring about new revenue and service models as carriers face a new class of mobile Internet devices that mimic PCs, predicts Bruggeman.